Chapter Sixteen

“Are you sure you don’t need a hand?” Powell asked Rosalie.

“No, we have the manpower to make our own repairs. Feel free to leave anytime you’re ready,” replied Rosalie.

“Something isn’t right,” said Frank. They said they’d just arrived right before we did. Now they’re waiting for us to leave. I’ll bet you any money they are here for the same reason we are and don’t want anyone watching while they snoop around.”

“What are the odds of four ships appearing in the same place at the same time?” mused Kimetz.

On the Celiker, a very similar conversation was taking place.

“Look at this map,” said Guiora. “You look at it casually and the eye is drawn to these star clusters here and here. You look at this area here and all these inhabited stars near each other over here. But, if you’re looking for a quiet place to hide, you see three empty spots. This one here, which is fairly well documented and known to be practically empty. This other one here, which is circled by about a dozen, inhabited systems. And this one, which is where we are. It’s perfect, so lots of people using the same place are almost a certainty.”

Papo and Isacus nodded in agreement. “And then when you get here, you find this dirty great slab of mush that we don’t have a chance of searching through. If that transmitter that Tyrell says will be here isn’t working then we have no chance of finding whatever is in there, no matter how big it is.”

“Why wouldn’t it be working?” asked Higuel.

“Obvious, now that I think about it,” said Tyrell. “If it’s in amongst all those rocks, it could easily have been crushed or knocked. And even if it is in perfect condition, it probably ran on batteries and the best batteries that you can buy today will only hold their charge for sixty, maybe seventy years. This one has been sitting here for over a century.”

Meanwhile, on the New Dawn.

“So if this place is going to end up so popular for hiding stuff, would what we’re looking for still be here?” asked Frank.

“I don’t see why not,” said Georgi. “If it’s hidden here, then it must be pretty big. And there’s no signs of any major operations.”

“Can we use our survey gear to have a look inside that mess?” asked Rosalie.

“That wouldn’t be a problem,” said Waldemar. “It was practically designed for this type of work. We could have the entire place mapped out and scanned in a few hours.”

“Not to be the eternal pessimist,” said Selinin. “But can the New Dawn even get in there to pick something up, if we do find something?”

“He has a point,” said Rosalie. “We are too big and can’t maneuver properly to get in there amongst all that rubbish without taking some serious damage. That chap on the Kilkka could have made short work of it with all those guns and armour he had.”

“There is the Celiker,” said Westby. “She’s small enough to get in there and has already done so.”

“Maybe you should call the New Dawn,” said Isacus on the Celiker. “With all that gear they’re packing, they should be able to poke around in here quite easily.

“Yeah, I suppose I can call them,” said both Captains.

“There she is, right where Zavil said she’d be,” said Captain Rison.

Judge Welton looked at the displays. “Yep, that looks like the Immonen. There’s nothing else around here. Take us in, nice and close.”

The Valiant Soul had been commandeered by Judge Welton specifically to come searching for the Immonen. She had a load of long-range sensors, not that they had actually needed them. They also had six deputies aboard who were trained for EVA and body recovery. If Judge Jordi Leshem was on the Immonen, then Welton was going to take him home.

“Range is four hundred meters,” said Annette, navigator on the Valiant Soul. “We’re right alongside the Immonen, trajectories matched.”

“You have the schematics for the Explorer class loaded?” asked Welton.

“Got it,” replied Zach.

“Okay Zach, you and your team are cleared to go.”

The secondary airlock on the Valiant Soul opened and six figures came out. Like the Boarders of the Kilkka, they were clad in EVA suits, light armour and pushed along by maneuvering packs.

They quickly made the short crossing to the Immonen and crawled across it. Like the others before them, they made their way to the emergency hatch, reported its being open and were instructed to enter - with caution.

Entering the main lounge, the lead Deputy found Asoye.

“Contact. We have a deceased, no identification,” said Alvin.

“Copy you. Status?” said Zach.

“Looks like a starvation or dehydration case. The body is stationary in the center of the room so environmental must have failed before death.”

On the bridge of the Valiant Soul, the other crew listened on.

“What do you think?” asked Rison. “Simple ship failure?”

“Possible,” replied Welton. “The last message she sent that was received stated that she’d had PD Rod trouble and was just coasting. If they couldn’t fix those then they’d have just kept right on going until they hit the edge of the universe. I wonder why they didn’t send a distress call?”

“They might have had multiple failures,” offered Nyles. “I’ve studied a lot of case histories and the old Explorer class were a fairly solid ship when they were new. But some of the materials they made them out of didn’t have a good lifespan, so nobody in their right mind would buy an old second-hand one.”

“Someone did. They bought the decommissioned Immonen, re-patched her as the Swift and sent these poor fools to their deaths.”

On the Immonen, the Deputies had finished placing the body in a body bag for transportation back to the Valiant Soul. Before handling, dozens of scans had been made and a sample taken from the body for analysis.

“We have a genetic match,” said Alvin. “She’s Asoye Terekado. No toxins, narcotics or obvious drugs come up on the preliminary exam.”

“There should be at least three others, probably more aboard. Spread out and find them,” instructed Welton. “And send someone to get the main data cores from the ships central computer. If they had any logs, I want a copy of them.”

With six trained and experienced Deputies searching the ship, it didn’t take long for the small room with the other deceased to be found.

“What do you think?” asked Alvin.

“Hard to say for sure,” said Zach. “But it looks like there was a falling out in the crew and someone killed everyone else. But Asoye was too slight of frame to have forced everyone in here, unless she had a weapon of some type.”

Two deputies set to work collecting evidence and securing the bodies. The evidence collection was more so that the history of the Immonen and her ill-fated passengers could be recorded. After all this time, there would be few family members who would look for the missing people and nobody to prosecute.

In the meantime, the other four deputies set about methodically exploring the ship. The central data cores were found and removed, personal effects were collected and everything imaged. It was about two hours later that someone looked in the cold store by the galley and found another body.

“Any idea on who it is?” asked Welton when the news came through.

“Not specifically, but it must be one of the crew,” replied Zach from aboard the Immonen. “We’ve already identified Judge Jordi and Deputy Weldon’s remains. We also have a probable match for Peter Lehrer, but we’ll need to confirm that when we return to Balga Station. That’s all four of the initial suspects accounted for. There were a total of eight people in the open room, plus Asoye in the main lounge and the unsub in the freezer.”

“I’m really hoping that there is some useful information on that data core.”

“Any theories so far?” asked Nyles.

“Well, on the face of the evidence it would seem that the unsub put or forced everyone into the top room and opened the outer door. Then Asoye locked him in the cold store where he froze to death leaving her alone on a broken ship full of dead bodies.”

“That’s really, really depressing,” said Nyles.

“Most crime scenes are,” replied Weston.

“Well, it’s not like there is a lot to haggle over,” said Powell. “We can’t find it without you, you can’t reach it without us. Both of us could do it independently if we leave and come back with another ship, but then it’s a race between us, plus the Bloodbath and the Kilkka.”

“So simple,” said Rosalie. “A fifty-fifty split is the only equitable way to do it. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

On the Celiker, Guiora turned down all their scanning and sensing equipment so that it wouldn’t be overpowered by the sweeps of the New Dawn’s antennas. The New Dawn powered up and made several high-powered scans of the local sections of the debris field. The Celiker had already tried making several passes whilst transmitting the access codes provided by Tyrell, but had not had any response. As had been discussed earlier – that system was most likely either broken or had died long ago.

“Anything?” asked Isacus.

“Nothing yet,” replied Waldemar. We’ll probably need to scan the entire field and then search through the data for inconsistencies. There is still the strong possibility that what we are looking for is quite small, or buried within one of the larger pieces.”

Those aboard the Celiker could only wait for their turn. The New Dawn made several long passes around the debris field, and an entire sweep ended up taking over three hours. After carefully scrutinizing the data, there were no results of any major interest. There was no machinery, no dense materials and no other signs of their being anything other than rocks within the entire group.

“This can’t be it!” cried Tyrell. “There has to be something here!”

“Told you it was a damned wild goose chase,” muttered Selinin. “But noooo, you wouldn’t listen.” Georgi just sat in glum silence. After all they’d been through, all the distance they’d come and nearly being killed, it seemed so unfair.

“There is a pretty good possibility that whatever was here was taken long ago,” said Frank. “After all, it’s not like this place is hard to miss.”

“I don’t suppose those rocks have any value?” muttered Papo.

On both ships, people turned to look at each other. Could it be that obvious? The ‘treasure’ was all over the place and they couldn’t see it because there was so much of it?

“Analyze the nearest piece you can find,” said Rosalie. The New Dawn was able to catch a small piece and ripped it apart for assessment to see just what it was. It took about ten excruciating minutes, but then the results came back.

“Mostly basalt, with some iron ore,” said Westby, disappointed.

“Here’s something interesting though,” said Waldemar. “Near the center there are five large pieces, and all five of them are almost perfectly spherical.”

“That is interesting,” said Powell. “Squirt us the co-ordinates and we’ll go in and have a look.”

The New Dawn made one final pulse as it mapped out as much of the intervening debris between the Celiker and their target and fed the information to her navigation computer. With such an accurate map, Powell was able to easily maneuver through the field. It was still fairly slow going, and it took them about thirty minutes to reach their destination.

“We found the marker,” said Powell. “Looks like it was crushed between the surface and some other large rock at some stage. Which means that these five babies are what we came for.”

“Any ideas on what it is?” asked Rosalie.

“Our gear isn’t as good as yours. We can tell that it’s pretty similar in density to everything else, but not what it’s made of.”

“Can you analyze in there?”

“Annoyingly, no. We’ll have to grab a chunk and bring it back out to you. And even if we wanted to take this stuff right now, just one of these spheres has about ten times the mass that we do. We’re going to need a bigger ship to pull them out, probably several.”

The mood aboard both ships was apprehensive. The individual crewmembers were either optimistic and thinking that they’d made a fortune or pessimistic and thinking that they’d wasted their time. It took Deva bout twenty minutes to secure a sample and return, and then it took the Celiker another half hour to return to the New Dawn. Captain Powell, Isacus and Guiora transferred to the New Dawn with the sample.

“Hello Captain,” said Powell. “Pleasure to finally meet you in person.”

“Hello Captain,” said Rosalie, shaking Powell’s hand. “Welcome aboard the New Dawn.”

Isacus handed the sample, which was about the size of a man’s head to Waldemar. The two crews made idle talk while the sample was analyzed. Soon, Waldemar returned to the main lounge where everyone was waiting.

“We now know the truth,” said Waldemar with excessive theatrics.

“Which is?” asked Rosalie icily.

“We have wasted our time.”

“Care to enlighten us?” he said.

“Certainly,” said Waldemar. “The sample is refined Gronon, more commonly known as Chauvin.”

More groans, more cursing.

“Oh, that’s just wonderful,” said Isacus. “So we have just located some seventeen odd million tons of PD Rod material that nobody uses any more?”

“It would seem that way,” said Waldemar apologetically. “At a wild guess, I’d say that someone created a stockpile when the mines on Elli started to run low. They probably assumed that when the mines were exhausted, they could sell it off at an inflated price. That would also explain why planetary governments would go to war to get this stuff, especially before New Jakarta bought their new versions to the market. And since the market for this commodity crashed long ago, that would also explain why there hasn’t been a nigger effort to locate it since then.”

“Okay, can we sell this stuff to anyone?’ asked Frank.

“Sure,” said Powell. “There are plenty of history nuts around who like to restore old ships. Won’t get anywhere near the price of transporting the stuff.”

A dull melancholy settled over the lounge. Everyone was depressed by this bit of news.

“So where does that leave us?” asked Guiora.

“We both get fifty percent of nothing,” said Rosalie.

“But we get to go home,” said Powell. “I think we’ve all earned some decent shore leave.”

The crews said their goodbyes and Powell and his men returned to the Celiker. Both ships jumped out of the area and once again it was dark and quiet, as it had been for untold millennia.

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